Be Excellent To Each Other

Long story short, I'm not happy and don't see the point any more. It seems like all that remains now is to grind away for three more decades until I can retire and die.

I am seriously considering alternatives to start fresh, and wondered if anyone else had had similar feelings of disillusionment and made some big changes?

I know folks that have re-trained to be teachers..

No, but I keep feeling a bit that way too. I don't really even dislike my job or anything but I just keep feeling like it's now or never.

Do the GDL!

(Don't do the GDL.)

Have you thought of long haul trucking?

Take a leaf out of Crasters book and leave your job to become a really bad career criminal.

And then get demoted.



Aside from that don't know what to suggest

In all seriousness, there are plenty of options out there, and if for some crazy reason you do consider law, do the opposite of what I did and try to bag a training contract before you jump in feet first. Then they'll likely pay for your GDL and LPC. And maintenance.

If you're not considering law (most likely), make sure you have some money saved up because it's fucking hard out there.

My sister spent many years working for a mail order wine company, doing basic stuff on computers, and got fed up, learnt how to dive, did her divemaster, and has worked as a dive instructor ever since, and is now the manager of the Emperor dive center in Sharm el Sheik
Mrs Dom got bored of working for PWC for obscene amounts of cash & no life, took voluntary redundancy, and now runs a family business with her dad & stepmum selling wholesale baby clothes.
I was working for Infogrames for many years until they shut our studio down, and had the option of going with the new studio the ex-management were setting up (a little outfit called Sumo Digital), and I decided I didn't want the office life anymore and set up on my own in Cardiff. Had my downs & ups, but things are going good now, and as well as a catalog of flash games, I will have a proper retail game in the stores hopefully in the next few months (Devil May Cry HD collection - I am the lead for the PS3 conversion of DMC3SE) From home.

All concerned are much happier

I have. So has Mali.

Mine wasn't due to disillusionment though.

Pretty sure there's an essay about my job history - ah yes, here it is: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=7819&p=601926#p601926

Worked in banking till my mid twenties, changed to be a support worker.

I think the thing is to have an 'in' somewhere - Dom was already a coder, his missus had a family to do business with. Mine was a colleague of my girlfriend who was willing to give me a go, though that whole place was staffed via nepotism.

Of course now I find the whole sector cut so deep there's not even an illusion of security or longevity and the jobs going are all compromised in spec to the point where I'd go back to my banking roles if all such roles hadn't been wiped off the face of banking three years ago.

What I've learned is if you want some sort of guarantee of getting any money to live on, go into something that absolutely cannot be done without - plumbing or car maintenance or whatever... remember that perfume factory round your way somewhere where the whole workforce lost their jobs during the big crash and were in the local news looking surprised people didn't want to pay £40 to stink of piss once half the country was redundant or having their pay frozen.

I would dearly love to do this but I get scared. With a baby on the way and my wife taking maternity leave, money is tight enough as it is without me dicking out.

Longer version:

I've been in a bit of a funk the last few weeks, it building to a head since about Thursday or Friday.

I just don't see the point any more. I've achieved everything society tells you to do with your life: a house, a job, a car, a significant other. It feels like now I've done all that, there's nothing left but to just grind away at my job for another three decades so I can retire and wait to die.

I don't want that to be it, to be waiting for two weeks in the sun every year as my escape from drudgery.

I'm seriously considering a completely career change, a fresh start. I'm 'only' 32, it's not too late for me.

I'm thinking specifically of learning sign language so I can become a support worker/teaching assistant for special needs, as I have enough experience and knowledge to work as a computer or English teacher.

This is also an opportunity for Mrs Metal to escape from having to work in offices for the rest of her life, as she is willing to learn ASL too (she has a very very basic knowledge of BSL) and could go and work in a similar role or at Dogs For The Deaf. We talked about it last night and agreed to start looking into doing it. It also means we'll finally start making good on our long dormant intent to move back to Canada.

It's scary, I don't know where to start, what qualifications I need, anything like that. But just planning it has given me a real kick in the butt, and I am excited at the thought of having something to work towards besides just coming home to open a beer and play Xbox/Eve/whatever. I can see this sorting out so many things that I want to go ahead with it.

If you move to Canada I shall be cross.

Signing courses are very popular in South Wales, or they were in 2009 when all my colleagues were queuing up to take them for the prestige and earning opportunities. A mate up here does it, and signs in female students dance classes amongst other things.

I'm not sure you'd like it

I need to do ASL, not BSL, though. That is on much thinner ground in the UK.

I'm currently working on a career change, because IT is as boring as piss and while I know I have the capability, I have absoultely no interest in learning anything new about computers.

My backup plan is merely a higher-paying IT job, while it wouldn't make me less bored but it'd at least enable me to do more fun stuff in my spare time.

Sounds to me like you have a good idea about what you want to do. My advice is to do it! If you're not happy, change it up whilst you still can. You'll only look back on it with regret if you don't.

What's that saying? You miss 100% of shots you don't take.

I think you mean "Han shot first".

People keep telling me "you'd be a great teacher"

I keep telling them "I can't be trusted around teenage girls"

You could teach in a primary sch-

Scratch that.

Ah yes, but shooting is the last thing you should consider doing in basketball.

And when seagulls follow the trawler, they think fish will be thrown into the sea.

Wasn't that philosopher and all-round prophet Eric Cantona?

Oui.

A friend of mine was a developer for years, and moved into video work before finding he had pretty much no work. On moving back to the UK from the US, he decided on a total career change and applied for a job in a care home. He's never been happier, and is grasping every single opportunity offered regarding being educated in the sector. He's thrilled to be working in something where he says what he does matters, and isn't even that fussed about the long hours and not-great pay.

I guess it all boils down to trying to ensure you end up doing something you enjoy—or at least don't dislike. If you're going to work every day and hating it, a change is almost certainly a very good idea, especially if, as GovernmentYard said, shifting into something essential.

Do you not find that when your out of work, and no house and that, everything is a massive stress and difficult you never have any money and thats bad? Then when you've got all that stuff nothing will do but to ditch it all and start again, then again if you're not happy what your doing theres no point doing it. Only thing i have to add is, if you have a hobby, dont take it up as a job. Good way to ruin a hobby that. (Disclaimer: in my experience)

Well, my job is my hobby and I'm happy enough. Having said that, I also did a couple of things i had always wanted to do and ended up walking away from the whole thing, so

I'll get these splinters out of my arse, now.

I thought you did SharePoint stuff. I have some boring hobbies but that takes the piss.

I feel like you, except I have achieved nothing that society has demanded of me.

Big Boss Man parlayed working in a correctional facility in Cobb County, GA into a decent wrestling career.

And he kicked out of the Perfect Plex. Ah Ray Traylor, history won't remember you

Not being a scientist anymore is great. I've really enjoyed myself since doing education again. The work side of things hasn't been terribly regular since, but it's been a boon to get me into other places. I don't think that with just a B.Sc I would gave gotten the work in the VC place, or the current gig. I put the lack of regular stuff down to times being hard, and using every opportunity to get a foot in the door and then using my awesome as a force multiplier. I've not regretted it one bit.

How come you left Science Mali?

The Fruit Fly Incident.

My Dad was some office based clerk for TarMac in the 60s, he got bored and became a police man.

My brother was an assistant "buyer" for a medium sized retail company, he bacame an accoustic engineer for Sony Music.

Malc

I stopped enjoying it, and to really make a decent fist of a career one needs a doctorate (four years) and then another decade post doc'ing. My responsibilities hadn't appeared to me to have increased much over six tears and I was becoming increasingly more depressed with the day to day job of being a molecular biologist. A DPhil was offered but I turned it down and then contract was expiring so thought 'now or never'. When I first began, I really wanted to do a doctorate but as time passed that enthusiasm ebbed and my role became more if a service led one, rather than the exhilaration of the first two years of pure research (the group I was in was doing proper class leading on a third the budget of the Anericans and Japanese). Once you've worked out a process, cloning one thing is much the same as cloning another and it becomes about the numbers (I think I've cloned well over 100,000 things in a variety of systems, hosts and conditions, purified in large scale several hundred and crystallised about 100). A lot of the time though, I'd do science to support the rest of the group, making up batches of competent cells, making reagents and buffers, stock management and the like. I enjoyed the teaching side of things, as I was very good at that, but gradually the enjoyment went away.

Edit: Add in the flies, you're probably into millions Fuck knows how many I went through in those three months.

Yeah, but surely:
"What do you do?"
"I'm a molecular biologist."
"*moist*"

Pfft, he's got his red shirt for that.

MrsA was more impressed with my being a mighty space pirate. She didn't speak to me for three years whenever she met me despite knowing what I did.

No. Not in my experience.

On that note, I've always wondered how the fuck you can not see any shitehawks for hours, yet as soon as you start the winch to haul your net thousands of the bastards magically appear from nowhere!? Where do the feathery gits come from? Do they hide just beyond the horizon* & listen for a change in engine note or the smell of warm hydraulic fluid?
*Only a few miles at the height of a wee boat.

Eh, sometimes it works... Although most people remember it as 'marine biologist'. Plus, I met Lady T before uni, so it's not like I've tried all that hard to cash in on it.

I was in a very very similar position to Mali actually, back in the UK. I was so pissed off with work, I'd asked my supervisor about learning new things, maybe taking on some more responsibilities but the answer was 'no'. I was so bored doing the same few things over and over again, and I could see the team was no more than 2-3 years from disbanding completely as our team leader was quickly approaching retirement age. I didn't want to stay in lab science as the wages were pretty shit and I had no intention of ever doing a PhD, so couldn't see myself going anywhere. I considered moving into sales, or technical support but wherever I looked it seemed hard to get into - and high pressure if I did maybe make it in.

I was fucking super fortunate (I can't believe my luck basically) to stumble across a job where the technical skills required matched almost exactly what I was doing - only it was much more senior, almost as if it were 2 or 3 jumps up the career ladder, like me being given my old boss' job. Plus it was in an exciting overseas location. I was lucky I could offer a fairly rare skill (producing transgenics by pro-nuclear microinjection, fact fans) which they were desperate for, but this new job is also giving me the chance to develop supervisory and management skills. Before, I was the most lowly ranked person in the lab. Now I have 5 staff report directly to me... It's odd, and sometimes I wonder how it worked out like this. Good for me though, obv, but it wasn't a complete career change.

Not that any of this helps you really, but the moral is, go ahead, take a chance. I was lucky, and I hope you are too.

I'm selling these fine leather jackets.

I, like a huge amount of people in the IT industry, would jump at a chance to do something completely different, were it not for 2 reasons:

1) I have no idea what else to do.
2) Nothing I change to now will come close to the amount of money I currently earn, at least for the first few years and probably never. I know that money isn't everything, but when you are used to a certain income level, taking a 70%+ pay cut isn't an option I want to take on purpose.

I hope it's not too unpleasant this weekend when I go to visit my parents and try to explain what I have in mind. My father in particular will wonder why I'm giving up a well paid, fairly easy job in favour of, and I quote, "something I've never heard you voice an interest in before". I tend not to tell them everything because they obsess over everything I tell them. I casually mention Kate's uncle in conversation and he's the first thing I get asked about for the next dozen phone calls.

That sums it up pretty precisely I'd say. But then you have to consider that when work is such a major part of the only life you're getting, do you really want to be utterly bored and a bit annoyed for it? Quality of life must trump considerations of cash. To a point, I agree, but as long as you have enough to survive without too much discomfort, enjoying your job must be worth it.

Well, I know that I have it good. I don't necessarily hate my job, I just hate the fact that I have to work, which I'm not sure would be different in a different job
As IT jobs go, i've got a great one to be honest. I get paid well, I work for a great company that treats its people well, I have influence, people listen to what I have to say and my job is pretty much to have had experience and know stuff, and tell other people that. It works for me because I get to basically show off all day when i'm actually at work, and when i'm not at work (which is about 30% of the time) I get to "work from home" and still get paid.

The prospect of giving that up to do something else, which I suspect after the first initial few months I would dislike for the same reasons as the current job, is too much of a risk to take...

This is my first job in It that feels liek I make a difference and is not just putting 'tin on desks'.

I wouldn’t change again, as I’m 40 now, get well paid and my job, even though it has changed over the years and is not as much fun, is in reality is a shit load better than a lot of other peoples.

I wouldn’t put anyone else off changing though, I would just make sure you choose something you really like, as to succeed you will need to play catch up with people who have been doing the job longer that you.

I moved into IT 10 years ago and now run the dept of the place I started at as a desktop guy. I was always noticed as I spent half my free time teaching myself more IT and soon got ahead of my peers. It helped as I would still view IT as a hoby, although I spend less time doing it now as I'm married and have other intrests such as gardening and things the wife tells me to like

Even today I’m a better technical troubleshooter than most of my desktop guys as I still have an interest and most of them don’t outside of work

My hobby is intellectual masochism.